


Why Steve Rogers is Late on Friday Mornings

by rabidsamfan



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, catching up on the twentieth century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 22:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13017732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: Even superheroes need to pee.





	Why Steve Rogers is Late on Friday Mornings

Even superheroes need to pee.

That’s how it started. Because Steve likes to run in the morning, and Thursday night is movie night, which sometimes means having to watch a second movie to explain the first movie. And on this one Thursday there was a third movie. With the bots thanks to Tony who insisted that Dummy is at least as snarky as Crow. But it was hard to tell because JARVIS did the translating and Clint pointed out that JARVIS kind of speaks in snark to begin with, and that got Tony started, and that meant everyone getting to bed about twenty minutes before it was time to get up again.

So naturally that meant on Friday morning when Steve woke up it was later than usual and his head was full of bad jokes and confusing dialogue. He had some breakfast and a whole lot of coffee, and even after looking at the clock decided he really wanted to go and run even though it would probably mean dodging commuters and shoppers. Although late as it was if he could get off Manhattan it might not be so bad.

So he went down to the station and played subway roulette to get out of the middle of town, and came up in Brooklyn, where there were still commuters and shoppers, but not as many, and set off at a gentle lope, playing eeny meeny miney mo with the streets before turning left or right, because he wasn’t going anywhere particular, he was just going.  
And somehow his feet took him back to the streets he knew, and a lot had changed and a few things hadn’t and he turned a corner and there was the library he’d gone to when he was a kid, still standing, and there was a librarian with pink hair opening the door to a crocodile of tiny kids and a smattering of adults with strollers.

And Steve stopped to watch. Which wasn’t exactly a mistake, but it felt like one, because the moment his mind wasn’t on running his kidneys advertised their presence and it was a long way back to the Tower. But the library was right there, and it was public and it was free and it had a bathroom.

So Steve went in, and he didn’t have to ask which way to go, because although the paint job was brighter than he remembered and there were a lot more computers than he would have thought could fit, the basic floorplan was the same. And when he finished washing his hands and came out, he heard music coming from the room where the librarian had always told stories and shown Mickey Mouse cartoons, and he was curious so he went to peek.

There was a film on the screen, and it was live action, not a cartoon. And Steve recognized Paris, but more he recognized the way that the small, somber boy clutching the string of a big red balloon needed that bright splash of color in his grey world. Needed it enough to run to school when the trolley conductor wouldn’t let him ride, just so he could hang on to hope a little longer.

“Go ahead and sit down,” said someone softly, and Steve pulled his eyes away from the movie reluctantly. It was the pink haired librarian, who smiled at him. “Go on. This one’s a classic.”

And now, every Friday morning (at least every Friday morning when there’s nobody attacking the planet with chartreuse cephalopods) Steve finds himself crouching on one of the tiny chairs in the storytime room, discovering books and songs and films he missed alongside wide-eyed children, while the pink-haired librarian and the other adults pretend they aren’t smiling when the toddlers treat the giant in their midst like a convenient ladder, or the nearly-kindergartners confidently explain to him how to use the glue sticks during craft time. He’s “Mister Steve” now that he’s passed his CORI check, so he returns the favor by showing them how to use scissors, or making drawings of them riding elephants and dragons and penguins and bananas. (He’s still not sure how the banana thing got started, but it was very popular there for a week or two.)

The librarians want him to tell some of the stories he remembers, and he might, someday. They were pretty good stories. But for now he’s content to mostly listen, and watch during the stories and the movies, because everything is new if you’ve never seen it before. And some of it, like the red balloon, is magic.

It gives him hope.

**Author's Note:**

> The movie Steve caught a glimpse of is [The Red Balloon](https://archive.org/details/LeBallonRougetheRedBalloon), which I heartily recommend for all ages. It's French, but has so few words it hardly matters, and at 34 minutes long is perfect for a once a year showing at storytime.


End file.
